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By and large, Culture Wars is a voice crying in the wilderness in this day and
age of decadence and faithlessness. Most of CW’s articles point out the
deficiencies in the church and society that few others are willing to
mention, much less investigate. Because CW’s message is so critical, you
might wonder just what kind of impact it is having. Are people listening? Are
lives changing? Is society becoming more aware of the evils surrounding it?
I’m sure it is to some extent, but sometimes we receive direct evidence that
our voice is being heard and things are changing. As most of you know, about a decade ago Culture Wars decided to confront the
anti-Christian Jewish influence in our society head on. Amongst the many
issues it has covered, CW published
an article
in January 2008 titled: “The Old Covenant: Revoked or Not Revoked?” In it we
took to task the Catholic prelature for caving into Jewish ideologues and
sympathizers who have been trying, for several decades, to push the Church
into rejecting its traditional teaching regarding the revocation of the
Mosaic covenant. As is usually the case, if and when resistance to the
onslaught was mounted, claims of “anti-semitism” would soon follow, just as
it recently did for Pope Benedict XVI when he kept the Latin Mass prayer that
required the Jews to convert to Christianity for their salvation. As our
article pointed out, the pressure from Jewish quarters came to bear in a most
profound way when the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
added a sentence on page 131 of its first ever catechism, The United States Catholic Catechism for
Adults, published in 2006. The USCCB catechism not only resurrected the
Mosaic covenant but strongly implied that it was salvific for today’s Jews.
The three sentences in question on page 131 are: When God called Abraham out of Ur, he promised to make him a ‘great nation.’ This began the history of God’s revealing his divine plan of salvation to a chosen people with whom he made enduring covenants. Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them. Essentially the USCCB catechism is teaching
that among the various covenants the Jews received which contained the divine
plan of salvation, one of those was the Mosaic covenant. By coupling the last
sentence with the second by the word “thus,” the catechism implies that the
Mosaic covenant not only remains valid for the Jews of today, but it has an
eternal validity precisely because the Jews can always find the divine plan
of salvation in it. Whatever alternative interpretations one might construe
from these words, at the least, it is categorically false to say that the Mosaic
covenant remains eternally valid for the Jewish people, for as we
painstakingly showed in our January 2008 article, the Catholic Magisterium,
Sacred Scripture, and our Apostolic Tradition all say the opposite, namely,
that the Mosaic covenant was revoked; is no longer valid; and never had the
ability to save anyone in the past or in the present. Since Culture
Wars was the only Catholic magazine in the world to publish a critique of
page 131 of the USCCB catechism, I believe it is safe to say that whatever
happened afterward can be attributed directly to CW’s influence. Accordingly,
on August 5, 2008, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released
the results of their national vote to correct page 131 of the catechism. Here
are the astounding words of the report as issued by the Catholic
News Service: Bishops Vote to Revise U.S. Catechism on Jewish Covenant with God, by Nancy Frazier O’Brien, Catholic News Service: WASHINGTON: The U.S. bishops have voted to ask the Vatican to approve a small change in the U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults to clarify church teaching on God’s covenant with the Jewish people. The proposed change – which would replace one sentence in the catechism – was discussed by the bishops in executive session at their June meeting in Orlando, Fla., but did not receive the needed two-thirds majority of all members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at that time. After mail balloting, the final vote of 231-14, with one abstention, was announced Aug. 5 in a letter to bishops from Msgr. David Malloy, USCCB general secretary. The change, which must be confirmed by the Vatican Congregation for Clergy, would remove from the catechism a sentence that reads: “Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them.” The removal of the erroneous words is an
unprecedented act by a conference of Catholic bishops. Unless I’m making an
unwarranted presumption, I don’t think there has been a time in Catholic
history in which an official catechism, by vote of its bishops, has ever
excised a sentence that was suspected of heresy and subsequently issued a
second edition because of it. I am truly grateful for the US bishops’ courage
and their openness to truth. By an act that I am sure was not easy for them,
they have shown what can be done when we voice our objections to our pastors
as Canon 212, 2-3 tells us is our “duty” to do: The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the Church their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires. According to the knowledge, competence and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons. NO APOLOGIES FROM THE
CATHOLIC COMMUNITY Unfortunately, with all the applause we can
muster for the bishops who apparently did their duty before God, there is
also a darker side to this otherwise joyful event. First, one might expect
that, for such a high profile about-face as a revision of a catechism toting
a possible heresy, and a revision that more or less destroys the
anti-supersessionist movement so prevalent today, we might expect a note of
thanks, or even an apology, from the cadre of Catholic clerics and lay
apologists who had been pushing the idea of anti-supersessionism so ardently,
and at the same time, had severely castigated those like myself and Culture Wars for pointing out the problem.
One might expect a letter of apology and some remorse, for instance, from
Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, who not only defended the USCCB’s erroneous
statement in public by claiming it should be given a “charitable”
interpretation, but also denied an imprimatur to a book this author wrote,
stating that I had not followed the Church’s teaching on Jews and Judaism,
specifically citing page 131 of the USCCB catechism as one of his reasons,
yet not giving even one example from my book of any violations of Church
teaching. One might also expect an apology from Mark
Shea, the perennial blogger who claims that he is “Catholic and Enjoying It,”
for we would expect that he was indeed “enjoying” the fact that a falsehood
had been summarily removed from an official catechism so that now Catholics
everywhere would be free of such destructive theological error. But from
August 5 when the USCCB’s vote was made public until now, Mr. Shea’s blog has
been eerily silent about the whole issue. Similar to Bishop Rhoades, Mr. Shea
publicly endorsed the catechism’s erroneous statement, writing articles in
several popular Catholic magazines stating that the Mosaic covenant was still
in force, and appealing to the USCCB and its catechism as his highest
authoritative source. We might have expected an apology from Dr.
Eugene Fisher who in his emails told me that the Old Covenant for the Jews
was still in force, and who stated in another venue: “God already has the
salvation of Jews figured out, and they accepted it on Sinai, so they are OK.
Jews are already with the Father. We do not have a mission to the Jews, but
only a mission with the Jews to the world. The Catholic Church will never
again sanction an organization devoted to the conversion of the Jews. That is
over, on doctrinal, biblical and pastoral grounds. Finito.” We might have expected an apology from Roy
Schoeman, who in his book, Salvation is
from the Jews, gives the reader three completely different views of the
Mosaic Old Covenant, one taking it away (p. 129), one keeping it in force (p.
352), and one saying it will fulfill prophecy (p. 353). In the view that
keeps it in force, Schoeman boldly stated that “supersessionism” was an
“error” which “dominated Christian theology for much of the past two thousand
years,” thus putting himself in the same camp as the 2006 USCCB catechism. We might have also expected an apology from
Catholics United for the Faith
(CUF), especially its president, Leon Suprenant who, after eliciting critical
remarks from its patrons against us for exposing Bishop Rhoades’ endorsement
of the USCCB error, in addition to disallowing my response to his charges to
appear on the CUF blog, had this to say when a patron pointed out the CUF
calumny: “… give me a break.” We might have also expected an apology from
Monsignor David Malloy, General Secretary of the USCCB, who in a letter to me
on January 18, 2007, didn’t find any problem with page 131 of the USCCB
catechism, and passed the buck to the Vatican: Dear Dr. Sungenis: Your letter to me of December 12, 2006 concerning a passage in the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults has been received. Thank you for taking the time to send your observations. As you can well understand, the bishops of the United States are very committed to fulfilling their obligation to teach authentically the truths of the Catholic Faith in a manner that is both clear and consistent. To help insure that the Unites States Catholic Catechism for Adults assists the Bishops in that task, and in conformity with the prescriptions of the Code of Canon Law, after the text’s completion and approval by the bishops in their General Meeting, it was submitted to the Holy See for review and recognition. I am pleased that the Holy See has granted that recognition, as noted in each edition of the Catechism. With the hope that this information is helpful to you, I am Sincerely yours in Christ, Monsignor David J. Malloy, General Secretary. Or, we might have expected an apology from
Fr. James Massa, executive director of the USCCB Secretariat of Ecumenical
and Interreligious Affairs who, in his meeting with me and Tom Herron in July
2007, stated that “no one was a supersessionist any more” and that E. Michael
Jones should stick to “writing about music,” from which he became party to Bishop
Rhoades’ heavy handed tactics to silence this apostolate from ever speaking
on Jewish issues (a move, we find from an essay
recently written by Fr. Brian Harrison, which was canonically unsound from
start to finish). But alas, no such apologies have been
forthcoming from any of the above mentioned parties, much less have any come
from the dozens of lesser-known but equally vociferous ideologues who spend a
great portion of their day on Internet forums and blogs on a search and
destroy mission for supersessionists. Sorry to say, from my experience with
these people over the last six years, we can expect even more calumny and
vilification for even daring to expect an apology or thanks. I predict they
will do the same thing that they did when my January 2008 article was
published in Culture Wars. Instead
of celebrating the fact that CW
showed conclusively from Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium that the
Old Covenant is revoked, and that John Paul II’s 1980 Mainz speech was, when
compared to his 1986 Sydney speech, not teaching that the Old Covenant, the
Mosaic covenant, was never revoked, they instead vilified me for a footnote I
included about the subversive work of the Anti-Defamation League. DIGGING A LITTLE DEEPER Although the erroneous statement is being
removed from page 131 of the USCCB catechism, we must also consider what was
said in the interview with the Catholic
New Service to know the story behind the story, as it were. It may be the
case that the clerical leaders of the anti-supersessionist movement have not
exactly thrown in the towel. I speak in particular about Monsignor David
Malloy and Fr. James Massa. Their comments in the interview about the
bishops’ vote reveal that the excision and replacement on page 131 may be a
case of ‘six of one, and half a dozen of the other.’ If I’m right, then
unfortunately the Catholic bishops were led into one gross error when they
gave their approval to publish the USCCB catechism in 2006 with its erroneous
statement on page 131, and are possibly being led into another potential
quagmire in 2008 by the words chosen for its replacement. In brief, whoever
the mysterious author of the United States
Catholic Catechism for Adults is, he (or they) appear to be very crafty. First, let’s look at the bishops’ vote a
little more closely. The Catholic News Service stated: “The
proposed change – which would replace one sentence in the catechism – was
discussed by the bishops in executive session at their June meeting in
Orlando, Fla., but did not receive the needed two-thirds majority of all
members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at that time. After mail
balloting, the final vote of 231-14, with one abstention, was announced Aug.
5 in a letter to bishops from Msgr. David Malloy, USCCB general secretary.”
This tells us, of course, that the decision to excise the erroneous statement
was not a slam dunk. If in June 2008 less than two-thirds of the USCCB’s
bishops were on board, it means that less than 162 bishops were in favor of
excising the statement on page 131. What made the vote suddenly climb from
less than 162 to 231 (or 93%) is anyone’s guess. I find it extremely odd that
there was such a disparity in the voting from one month to the next. Perhaps
there were not enough of the bishops present during the executive session in
Florida. Or, perhaps in the privacy of a mail-in ballot the bishops could not
only think more clearly about the issue but could voice their opinion without
any peer-pressure from fellow bishops giving them a jaundice eye in a public
meeting. I don’t know, but in any case, I would certainly like to find out
who the 14 “No” votes were. THE USE AND ABUSE OF
SCRIPTURE TEXTS The Catholic
News Service goes on to say: “The change, which must be confirmed by the
Vatican Congregation for Clergy, would remove from the catechism a sentence
that reads: ‘Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through
Moses remains eternally valid for them.’ Replacing it would be this sentence:
‘To the Jewish people, whom God first chose to hear his word, “belong the
sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the
promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the
flesh, is the Christ” (Rom 9:4-5; cf. CCC, No. 839).’” Being a lover of Scripture, I usually don’t
have a problem replacing an erroneous theological statement with a sentence
from Holy Writ. Who could object to that? Unfortunately, however, the matter
is not so simple in this case. My suspicion is that the unidentified author
of the USCCB catechism chose Romans 9:4-5 because, if an uneducated Catholic
gives it a cursory reading from certain English translations, he may be
unduly influenced to believe that the Jews still have possession of
all the items listed in the verse, including the Mosaic covenant. It just so
happens that at least three of the items in verse 4 (i.e., “covenants,” “law,” and “worship”) have their source in the
Mosaic covenant. If it was the USCCB author’s intention to imply a continuity
and validity to the Mosaic covenant by citing this suggestive text of
Scripture (Romans 9:4-5) so as to give the impression that there is now a
divine stamp of approval to the idea that today’s Jews still possess the
Mosaic covenant, then the USCCB’s overall actions are a deceptive piece of
propaganda, and our praise for the removal of the previous erroneous sentence
must be severally muted. I am not accusing the catechism’s author or editor
of this motive; rather, I am only saying that IF this is their motive, then
they are being unethical and doing a great disservice to the Catholic
community in an apparent attempt to save face for themselves and continue
their agenda. I hope to God this is not their intention, but if it is, I am
just as obligated, according to Canon Law 212, 2-3, to point out this
subterfuge to the Christian faithful as I was obligated to point out the
fallacious theological content of the original wording on page 131. Let me elaborate. First, I find it rather
suspicious that the authors chose not to use what has become the ex officio translation of the Catholic
Church in America, the New American
Bible (NAB). Perhaps the reason for bypassing the NAB is that it does not
contain the word “belong” in Romans 9:4, the very word that implies the Jews
still possess all the items listed in the verse, including the Mosaic
covenant. The NAB reads: (4) They are Israelites; theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; (5) theirs the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Messiah. God who is over all be blessed forever. Amen. The
NAB, at this point being a very accurate translation, does not have the word
“belong” simply because it does not appear in the original Greek.
Additionally, since there are no textual variants in the verse, we know
precisely what St. Paul wrote and we can thus examine it without prejudice.
The phrase in question is “theirs the adoption” since it is the introductory
phrase that leads the remaining list of items (glory, covenants, law, etc.). The problem for English
translators is that neither the phrase in question nor the rest of the
relative clause contains a verb. In other words, the verse does not say “They
are Israelites; of whom belong the adoption…the glory…the covenants”
but literally “They are Israelites, of whom the adoption…the glory…the
covenants.” The word “belong,” which is a present tense verb added by some
English translators, could give the unwarranted impression that the
“Israelites” (or Jews) presently possess these blessings because the
blessings presently “belong” to them. In actuality, the only verb of the
sentence appears in the main clause (“Who are Israelites”), the object
of which the new edition of the USCCB will now refer to as “The Jewish
people” instead of “Israelites,” which is perhaps an attempt to further
distance the Jews from the past and make them closer to the present, for the
“Israelites” under Moses were not called “Jews.” The word “Jew” does not
appear until 2Kings 25:25 in the RSV, almost a thousand years after Moses. As it stands, without a verb in the
secondary clause the translator really has no grammatical basis for giving
any suggestion that today’s Jews presently possess the Mosaic covenant or any
of the other items in Paul’s list, a fact of which the NAB was apparently
very sensitive. If one decides to add words to the passage, it could just as
easily be translated in the past tense, e.g.,
“of whom belonged the adoption…the glory…the covenants,” which, of
course, indicates that the Jews once possessed these blessings, but no longer
do. Interestingly enough, a survey of various popular bibles reveals that the
translators were quite divided on their renderings of Romans 9:4. A good
portion of Catholic and Protestant bibles treated Romans 9:4 as referring to
the past, yet a majority of Protestant bibles treated it as a present. Catholic
Bibles:
Past Tense: New Jerusalem Bible: “They are Israelites; it was they who
were adopted as children, the glory was theirs…”; Jerusalem Bible: “My
brothers of Israel...they were adopted as sons, they were given the glory and
the covenants…”; Neutral: New American Bible: “They are Israelites;
theirs the adoption, the glory,”; Present Tense: Douay Rheims: “Who
are Israelites: to whom belongeth the adoption.” Protestant
Bibles: Neutral: King James Version:
“Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth
the adoption, and the glory”; Present Tense: American Standard: “who
are Israelites; whose is the adoption, and the glory,”; New American
Standard: “who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons”; New
International Version: “the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as
sons; theirs the divine glory”; New Revised Standard: “They are
Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory”; Revised Standard
Version: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the
glory”; Past and Present Tense: New English Bible: “They are Israelites:
they were made God’s sons; theirs is the splendor of the divine presence.” There are several points at issue regarding
these translations. First is the fact that even though an English translation
may render the verse as an implied present tense, in the Greek language, even
if a present tense verb were employed, it does not necessarily mean that the
action is occurring in the present time. A very common Greek present is the
“historical present,” in which case a Greek author would use a present tense
verb but apply it to past time. The problem for the English reader, however,
is that he doesn’t always know when the Greek is using an “historical
present,” unless, perhaps, he figures it out by the context. The bottom line
is this: even if the English translator supplies a present tense verb for a
Greek sentence, the Greek, either because there really is no verb in the
sentence, or because a Greek present tense verb does not always point to the
present, there is no basis for interpreting Romans 9:4-5 as applying to the
present (namely, that the Jews still possess the “covenants,” “law” and
“worship” of the Old Testament). Second, since the English version of the
1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church
uses the 1946 Protestant Revised
Standard Version (RSV) in its quotes from Scripture, it translates Romans
9:4 as noted above: “To the Jews belong the sonship, the glory…” (CCC
¶839). It is the same RSV translation that is now being proposed for Romans
9:4-5 in the future corrected edition of the USCCB catechism on page 131. Of
course, some astute scholar would point out that the 1994 Vatican Catechism
and the next edition of the USCCB catechism are really using the Catholic edition of the Protestant
RSV, since Catholic editors revised some of the Protestant translations. But
the reality is, the Catholic editors of the 1946 RSV accepted all 433 verses
from the Protestant translators for the book of Romans, except four verses
(Romans 1:4; 5:5; 8:11; 9:5, the last of which was changed to: “Christ, who
is God over all, be blessed forever” from the RSV’s “Christ. God who is over
all be blessed forever”). Hence, the verse appearing in the 1994 Vatican
Catechism for Romans 9:4 is the original translation from the 1946 Protestant
Revised Standard Version. This has its own set of problems, for most of the
Protestant translations around the turn of the twentieth century, including
the Revised Standard Version of 1946, were heavily influenced by
Dispensationalism, Millennialism, Zionism, and various other strains of thought
that were promoting a political and spiritual revival for Israel and the
Jews. The tendency among these bibles was to slant the translation to be more
favorable to that ideology. (Of the many examples, the RSV’s translation of
Romans 3:2 as: “…the Jews are entrusted with the oracles of God” changes the
Greek aorist (past) tense of episteuthesan
to the present tense “are entrusted” in place of the correct translation
“were entrusted”). Often when there was an ambiguity in the Greek or Hebrew,
these Protestant translators would take full advantage of it for their
ideological cause. Conversely, the fairest and most accurate way of
translating these types of passages is to give them a literal, word-for-word
reading from the Greek, but if it is necessary to add a word or two to make
the text easier for English readers, the translator should provide a footnote
to alert the reader to that addition (or as the King James does, the
translator puts the added words in italic font). As it stands, with most
translations that render Romans 9:4 as a present tense, few explain that they
are either adding words (e.g., “belong”) or that the Greek can use an
“historical present,” or any nuance of the Greek language. Hence, the English
reader may naturally think that if the verse says: “They are Israelites. To
them belong the adoption…glory…covenants” that the Jews presently possess the
Mosaic covenant and all the other blessings listed in the verse. Without a
footnote in the USCCB catechism, this very impression can easily be implanted
in the reader’s mind, and I’ve seen this from personal experience. In reality, there is a precise grammatical
reason why St. Paul excluded a verb from the secondary clause of Romans 9:4.
Paul’s intention is not to emphasize time but identity or origination. If we
examine the items closely, we see that they are identity markers, seven of
them, each one demonstrating precisely what made one an “Israelite.” Specific
applications from the OT are as follows: “sonship” (Ex 4:22-23; 19:5; Hs
11:1); “glory” (Ex 40:34; Lv 16:2); “covenants” (Gn 17-31; Ex 6, et al.); “law” (Ex 20; Dt 5, 28);
“worship” (Ex 23-34; Lv 1-27); “promises” (Gn 12-26; Is 53; Ez 36-37, et
al); “fathers” (Gn 12-28). Lastly, Christ is the eighth and the beginning
of a new seven. The “Israelites” are thus identified as the Christ-bearers. In light of the addition of Christ as the
eighth item (or the beginning of a new and open-ended seven), we can easily
see how the Greek grammar is intending to show that these eight items originated
from the Jews. This meaning is proven by the fact that the last item in
Romans 9:5, “Christ according to the flesh,” is also missing a verb, thus
following the same syntactical pattern Paul established in the beginning of
verse 4. As such, we can use the last phrase to prove the intent of the
previous phrases. Obviously, the Jews at large do not possess Christ
presently, since the whole point of Romans 9-11 is to show how obstinate the
Jews have been against Christ and that only a remnant have accepted Him at
any given time in history (Romans 10:16-21; 11:1-8). The phrase “Christ
according to the flesh” is New Testament terminology employed to demonstrate
that Christ’s actual flesh came from the flesh of Israelites, and therefore
Christ was as genuine a savior after the seed of Abraham and David as there
could be (cf. 2Sam 7:12; Matt. 1:1;
Rm 1:3). But although Christ originated from the Jews, the Jews do not
possess Christ, for they do not believe in him. All in all, the Greek grammar
requires this simple logic: if the Jews do not possess Christ, then neither
do they possess the seven other items, including the Mosaic covenant. Hence, if one attempts to say that the Jews
of today still possess the items listed in Romans 9:4-5, a serious
theological problem is created, for it would require that the Mosaic covenant
(which Paul refers to in Romans 9:4 as “the giving of the law”) should have
continued, in its totality, into our day and never ceased, including all the
“eye for an eye” laws (Ex 21:24); stoning for adultery (Dt 22:13f); rejection
for castration (Dt 23:1), etc.
Likewise, all the ceremonial laws (which Paul refers to in Romans 9:4 as “the
worship”) should have continued unabated in our day, including mandatory
circumcision, the temple cult, etc.
Is this not what religious Jews do today, all the while that they reject
Christ and Christianity? The most egregious crime, of course, would be that
committed by the Catholic Church, since she apparently ignored, for the last
2000 years, the continuity of the Old Testament legal and cultic blessings
listed in Romans 9:4-5 for today’s Jews. Moreover, St. Paul would have
contradicted himself, for in other passages he clearly stated that the
“giving of the law” and “the worship” were superseded by the New Covenant (cf. Heb 7:18; 10:9; 2Cor 3:6-14; Gal
3:10-12; 5:1-4; Col 2:15-16). In fact, the supersession of the Mosaic
covenant is the very reason that all the civil and ceremonial laws of Israel
have been replaced by the canons and sacraments of the Catholic Church. So
where does all this grammatical analysis leave us? On the one hand, if the
author of the USCCB catechism is quoting Romans 9:4-5 for the purpose of
secretly installing a “proof-text” for the catechism’s previous view that the
“Mosaic covenant is eternally valid for the Jews,” then the author has been
quite deceptive and he has only exacerbated the problem with which he began
in the previous edition of the catechism published in 2006. On the other
hand, if the catechism has innocently made a concerted effort to rectify its
previous error and is not implying (by its quoting Romans 9:4-5) that today’s
Jews still have possession of the Mosaic covenant and all its trappings, then
I heartily applaud them for their efforts. However, a footnote stating that
the quoting of Romans 9:4-5 is not for the purpose of saying that the Jews
presently possess the Mosaic law should be added, especially in light of the
fact that the USCCB, by its own admission, has already been caught putting a
totally erroneous statement on page 131 of its previous edition. After all
the negative press, readers certainly have the right to be suspicious of the
USCCB’s intent and competence in this regard. THE “TALKING POINTS” For
now, it remains to be seen which of these two motives was behind the recent
change in the catechism. If the former motive is the reality, it may explain
why a great majority of the bishops, who are for the most part very liberal
in their theology and sympathetic to Jewish causes, suddenly became so
agreeable to make the change, for nothing doctrinal has really changed,
except that, by quoting a passage of Scripture (Romans 9:4-5), an impression
of divine approval has now been stamped onto the previous belief about the
Mosaic covenant remaining valid for the Jews. That very impression is
suggested by some of the comments made by Monsignor Malloy and Fr. Massa, as
well as the “talking points” distributed to the bishops. The Catholic News Service reported:
“Talking points,” which were distributed to the bishops along with Msgr.
Malloy’s letter, state that the proposed revision of the USCCB catechism: … is not a change in the
church’s teaching. Catholics understand that all previous covenants that God
made with the Jewish people have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ through the
new covenant established through his sacrificial death on the cross. …The
prior version of the text might be understood to imply that one of the former
covenants imparts salvation without the mediation of Christ, whom Christians
believe to be the universal savior of all people. First, the “talking points” are admitting
that our analysis was spot on, namely, the prior version of the USCCB
catechism (“… God’s revealing his divine plan of salvation to a chosen people
with whom he made enduring covenants. Thus the covenant that God made with
the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them”) implies
that the Mosaic covenant “imparts salvation.” Secondly, and most important,
the “talking points” may be trying to cover over the catechism’s error by
suggesting that the only reason its previous version should be corrected is
not because it implied that the Mosaic covenant could impart salvation to
today’s Jews, but it said so without including “the mediation of Christ.” In
other words, the Mosaic covenant can be salvific for the Jews as long as it
is attached to Christ in some fashion. If that is the meaning and intent of
the “talking points” it is highly erroneous. In fact, it is just as erroneous
as the USCCB catechism’s previous attempt to say that the Jews have an
eternally valid covenant with Moses. I speak from experience on this issue,
for just a few months ago, Bishop Rhoades tried to use the same fall back
position in his public interview on the subject. Instead of saying that the
USCCB catechism was wrong on page 131, Rhoades suggested that it was only
short of including the mediation of Christ. He stated: I do not interpret anything on page 131 of the U.S. Catechism for Adults to mean that the Jewish people (or any group) have their own independent saving path to God, outside of Jesus Christ. I can see how the one statement that “the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them” might be misunderstood. I would interpret it to mean that the Jewish people retain a special relationship to God because of the Old Covenant, but I would not interpret it to mean that the Jewish people can be saved through the Old Covenant apart from Christ [emphasis mine]. My response
to this was: Once again, the question posed by the interviewer seems to be calculated, for it adds the phrase “outside of Jesus Christ.” As such, the question could be implying that, although “independent saving paths to God” are invalid by themselves, they are not invalid if they are not “outside of Jesus Christ,” whereby they inevitably become dependent on Christ rather than independent. Consequently, Bishop Rhoades may have inferred such an intent from the question, since he also used the two phrases “outside of Jesus Christ” and “apart from Christ” in his answer. What Bishop Rhoades should have been asked is whether
the Old Covenant has been revoked and superseded by the New Covenant, in
addition to asking him what he understands by the word “revoked” and
“superseded.” If the bishop answered “yes” to the revocation and supersession
of the Old Covenant, then it would have been clearly understood that he does
not believe in “dual covenant” theology. Unfortunately, and perhaps by
design, none of those pointed questions were asked of Bishop Rhoades in this
interview. The Catholic
New Service goes on to say, “Father James Massa, executive director of
the USCCB Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, told Catholic News Service Aug. 11 that he
did not ‘anticipate any tensions in the relationship’ between Catholics and
Jews as long as the proposed change is properly understood as arising from a
need to ‘remove ambiguity’ in the catechism. ‘The catechism is not the place
where you work out difficult theological problems,’ he said. ‘That’s what
scholars are charged to do.’” It goes without saying that a catechism is not
where one “works out theological problems.” By the same token, the catechism
is not the place where scholars are permitted to create theological problems,
as was the case on page 131 of the 2006 version. But now, although the USCCB
has decided to quote Scripture as a replacement of its previous error, this
results, unfortunately, in no guarantee that the right concept will be
implanted in the reader’s mind, for, as the Catholic Church knows very well
when it has had to confront the myriad of non-Catholic denominations in the
world, everyone has their own interpretation of what Scripture means, and
some passages of Paul’s, as Peter says, are “hard to understand and the
unstable wrestle with them to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16). Instead
of adding an unexegeted and uncontextualized passage of Scripture (namely,
Romans 9:4-5), the author of the catechism should have left well enough
alone. The excision of the erroneous statement (“Thus the covenant that God
made with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them”)
was sufficient without trying to cover it over with a difficult and ambiguous
passage of Scripture. In fact, if the author of the catechism is so keen on
quoting Scripture, why didn’t he quote, much less teach, anywhere in his
catechism the numerous passages in the New Testament that are crystal clear
about the revocation of the Mosaic covenant, such as Hebrews 7:18; 8:7,13;
10:9; 2Corinthians 3:6-14; Colossians 2:14-15; Ephesians 2:15? One can search
the Index of the 2006 USCCB catechism, but he will not find one reference to
any of these crucial verses, or even a statement in the catechism that the
Mosaic covenant has been revoked. THE JEWS HAVE “A” COVENANT
WITH GOD Later in the interview, the Catholic New Service writes: “Father
Massa said the status of the Jewish covenant has been “a very fertile area
for theological investigation” in recent years, although church teaching has
been clear on two related points: (a) the Jewish people “are in a real
relationship with God based on a covenant that has never been revoked”; (b)
“All covenants with Israel find fulfillment in Christ, who is the savior of
all.” In this instance, Fr. Massa is trying to capitalize on ambiguity.
Notice his words: “based on a covenant that has never been revoked,”
but he does not alert the reader to the precise identity of the covenant he
has in view. This is the same shell game that he and many others have been
playing with these covenants for the last few years. According to Fr. Massa,
there is “a” covenant still possessed by today’s Jews that their fellow Jews
possessed in the Old Testament, and this unrevoked covenant presently gives
the Jews, en masse, a “real
relationship with God.” All Jews today who practice Judaism are apparently
active members of this covenant. But the only covenants that the Jews
possessed in the Old Testament, en
masse, were the covenant of circumcision beginning with Abraham and the
legal covenant beginning with Moses. All Jews were included in these
covenants, whether they wanted to be included or not (otherwise they would
have been cut off from the Israelite community). So which of those two is Fr.
Massa referring to? He doesn’t tell us, and I believe there is a good reason
for his silence. The ploy, it seems to me, is to be deliberately ambiguous so
that no one can pinpoint its identity and neutralize Fr. Massa’s appeal to
“a” perpetual covenant for the Jews that supposedly gives them “a real
relationship with God.” It seems that Fr. Massa wants to create a sort of
quasi-covenant, a noosphere of covenant (to borrow a term from de Chardin)
that just hovers over the Jews like some gigantic spiritual and ethereal
cloud, but one that is undefined and unidentified. And here is a bit of irony. In the 2006
edition of the United States Catholic
Catechism for Adults, Fr. Massa and the catechism’s author had no problem
telling us the precise covenant they wanted to see fit the category of
creating a “real relationship with God that has never been revoked.” It was
the Mosaic covenant, stated clearly and plainly on page 131 of their
catechism: “Thus the covenant that God made with the Jewish people through
Moses remains eternally valid for them.” (Note that “eternally valid” is just
another way of saying “never been revoked”). But since the USCCB discovered
that this wording was erroneous, Fr. Massa switches back to promoting “a”
covenant and purposely avoids telling us what covenant it is. This was the
same problem I had with Dr. Eugene Fisher (another non-bishop of the USCCB)
in our discussions last year about the nature of the covenant. Dr. Fisher
kept insisting that the Jews have their own covenant. When I asked him for
the identity of that covenant, Dr. Fisher abruptly closed the discussion. Second, the Bible nowhere says that “The
Jewish people are in a ‘real relationship with God based on a covenant that
has never been revoked.’” The only thing the Bible says about a “revoking” in
regards to the Jews is in Romans 11:29, but it says only that the “gifts and
calling of God are irrevocable (or unrepentable),” not that the covenants God
established exclusively with the Jews, en
masse, are irrevocable. In other words, God has never revoked his gift
and call of salvation to the Jews, since that is the whole thrust of St.
Paul’s teaching in Romans 9-11 – that the Jews can still be saved, if they
will repent and accept Christ (e.g.,
Romans 11:14: “if somehow I might move to jealousy my kinsmen and save some
of them” or Romans 11:23: “if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be
grafted in”). But since there is only one legal covenant today, the New
Covenant in Jesus Christ, what covenant could the Jews possibly possess, en masse, that will give them a “real
relationship with God” other than the New Covenant? Instead of admitting
this, Fr. Massa is purposely muddying the waters by suggesting that there is
“a” covenant somewhere out there that the Jews continue to have apart from
Christianity. What covenant is that, Fr. Massa? There are only two covenants
left: (a) the Mosaic covenant and (b) the Abrahamic covenant. Fr. Massa has
already admitted that it cannot be the Mosaic covenant since, as he admitted
in a recent conversation with a CAI patron, he led the removal of the faulty
sentence from page 131 of the catechism. So that leaves the Abrahamic
covenant. But the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision was clearly abrogated,
so says that Council of Florence (Denzinger ¶695). That means that any Jew
who is practicing circumcision today as part of his religious obligation to
God is condemned by the Catholic Church. So what does that leave us? It leaves us
with precisely what I stated in my Culture
Wars article of January 2008 – the spiritual side of Abraham’s covenant,
the same truth the Catholic Church has taught continually in its dogmatic
tradition, as did John Paul II in his November 1986 speech in Sydney when he
said: “…the Catholic faith is rooted…in the irrevocable covenant made with
Abraham…for it is the teaching of both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
that the Jews are beloved of God, who has called them with an irrevocable
calling.” This is the covenant that saves Jews and Gentiles, but neither the
Jews nor the Gentiles can be a part of it unless they believe as Abraham
believed, and today, that means accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, as
Scripture says of Abraham and Moses (cf.
John 8:56; Heb 11:26; Rom 4:1-4). This was the covenant that divided Jew from
Jew, because only those Jews who had a genuine faith-relationship with God
and confessed their sins could ever reap the benefits of that covenant
(Romans 3:28-4:12). That is why Paul says in Romans 9:6: “For they are not
all Israel who are from Israel.” When Christ came, the spiritual side of the
Abrahamic covenant became the New Covenant, and Jews and Gentiles are
presently being saved in that very covenant (cf. Romans 4:1-24; Gal 3:6-29; Hebrews 10:16-18; 2 Corinthians
3:6-18). The difference between Abraham’s physical
covenant of circumcision and the spiritual covenant of salvation is that all
the Jews were part of the former, but only those who believed as God required
them to believe were part of the latter. In the same way, all Jews today who
accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are part of Abraham’s spiritual
covenant, and, of course, those who disbelieve are not members of that
covenant, but of the synagogue of Satan, as it were. The crucial point is:
the covenant that is “not revoked” does not apply to ALL Jews. It only
applies to believing Jews, Jews who believe in Jesus Christ, the God of Abraham
(Galatians 3:29: “And if you belong to Christ then you are Abraham’s seed,
and heirs according to the promise”). Practically speaking, most Jews (since
they do not believe in Jesus Christ) are not members of Abraham’s spiritual
covenant, and they have no other covenant that can bring them to God, for
there is only one name under heaven by which men can be saved, namely, Jesus
Christ. So, it would behoove Fr. Massa to stop teaching that the Jews, en masse or at large, have “a” covenant with God, and that because of this
unidentified covenant they possess some “real relationship with God” or that
they possess some lofty spiritual status with God that Gentiles don’t have.
There is no such covenant, for in the only covenant that exists today there
is no Jew or Gentile in Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:28). “NOT FLAT OUT WRONG” We
get a further impression in the interview that Fr. Massa is not ready to
throw in the towel when the Catholic
News Service states: “Father Massa added that the current wording in the
catechism ‘was not flat-out wrong’ but ‘was ambiguous and needed to be
qualified.’” Here we see what Fr. Massa seems to be hankering for. Two-thirds
of the bishops told him to excise the statement from page 131 of the
catechism, apparently because they believed it was erroneous, but Fr. Massa
still wants to save face for himself and his like-minded theologians by
making the outlandish claim that the sentence in question “was not flat out
wrong,” implying that there was some truth, howbeit ever so small, to the
idea that the Mosaic covenant is still valid for the Jews! It seems to be the
case, then, that Fr. Massa still believes the Jews both possess the Mosaic
covenant and by it have a “real relationship with God,” and he only needed a
clearer statement, this time supposedly from the Bible itself (namely, Romans
9:4-5), to validate that belief. But here is the stark truth: there is no
truth to the statement on page 131 of the USCCB catechism, and it was not
“ambiguous.” The USCCB catechism plainly and clearly stated a categorical
falsehood – that the Mosaic covenant was valid for the Jews. Equally
egregious was the previous sentence in the catechism, for it was followed by
the word “Thus” in the second sentence, implying that it was through the
Mosaic covenant that the Jews could still receive salvation! (“This began the
history of God’s revealing his divine plan of salvation to a chosen people
with whom he made enduring covenants. Thus the covenant that God made
with the Jewish people through Moses remains eternally valid for them”). If
anything, this is a “flat out” heresy, since it contradicts the Magisterium,
Tradition and Scripture, all of which we painstakingly documented in our
January 2008 article. We can thank God that the Holy Spirit moved the bishops,
whatever their personal motives, to throw that dubious sentence as far as
east is from west. Commenting
further on Massa’s explanation, the Catholic
New Service writes: “But because the catechism is an educational tool and
not a theological textbook, the bishops decided not to expand that section to
provide a fuller consideration of the issue, he said.” But what this amounts
to saying is that an unexegeted and uncontextualized verse of Scripture,
namely, Romans 9:4-5, was put in the place of a previous erroneous statement
for the purpose of saying that, if the Jews still possess the Mosaic
covenant, it is “not flat out wrong,” just “ambiguous.” To do the right
thing, especially since they previously did the wrong thing, the bishops
should have indeed “decided to expand that section to provide a fuller
consideration” of the difficult and highly suggestive passage of Romans
9:4-5, for if it had been properly translated and exegeted, there would be no
suggestion that the Jews still possess and are inevitably sanctified, en masse, with a “real relationship
with God” by “a” covenant that originated in the Old Testament. According
to the Catholic News Service, Fr.
Massa also said: “it is also the church’s understanding that the full
incorporation of Israel into the saving covenant of Christ may be the fruit
of the end times, may not happen until the end of history.” Finally Fr. Massa
speaks about the “saving covenant of Christ.” But this reference necessarily
means that the “a” covenant Fr. Massa referred to earlier as the covenant
which provides a “real relationship with God based on a covenant that has
never been revoked,” is not the saving covenant of Christ. For if all
Jews are under the “covenant that has never been revoked,” yet only some
are incorporated into the “saving covenant of Christ,” then obviously we are
talking about two different covenants that have two different results, yet
both are said to have the same duration (i.e.,
never revoked). Hence, it appears the Fr. Massa is still teaching dual
covenant theology. As for the claim that it is the “church’s
understanding that the full incorporation of Israel into the saving covenant
may be the fruit of the end times,” the operative word here is “may,” since
the “church” certainly doesn’t hold as dogma, or even official teaching, that
the Jews will have a “full incorporation” into Christ. The 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church,
¶674, which stands as the only official statement addressing of this
particular issue, is certainly not definitive about such an outcome, since it
merely strings together various quotes from Chapter 11 of Paul’s letter to
the Romans without exegeting them. The 1994 Catechism could just as well be
teaching that the “full incorporation of Israel” is occurring presently as the
Gospel goes forth to all the Jews and Gentiles of the world, and those Jews,
from Abraham to Christ’s Second Coming, who accept the Gospel will represent
the “full incorporation” of the Jews into the “saving covenant.” More importantly, since Fr. Massa holds to
the idea of a future “full incorporation” of the Jews into the “saving
covenant,” he not only admits here that the Mosaic covenant is non-salvific,
but his thesis also leads him to the twisted logic that, if only in the
distant future are the Jews going to accept the Gospel, then they will not
accept it in our day, and therefore we are not required to preach the Gospel
to them today. This is the very thesis behind Cardinal Keeler’s Reflections on Covenant and Missions
document that he forged with Jewish rabbis in 2002. This unproven prediction
about the future leads them to believe that since the Jews will not receive
Christ in our present day, then they should not be “targeted” with the
Gospel. (Keeler’s exact words were: “...campaigns that target Jews for
conversion to Christianity are no longer theologically acceptable in the
Catholic Church”). This same mentality leads Fr. Massa to believe that, in
the interim period before the end of time, the Jews, en masse, can enjoy some kind of quasi-relationship with God based
on their former covenants in the Old Testament, as if these covenants create
some kind of spiritual holding-pattern for the Jews while God prepares them
for the full-blown covenant in Jesus Christ, even if most of them are long
dead before the so-called mass conversion takes place. This is the same idea
that Jewish convert Roy Schoeman tries to establish in his book Salvation is from the Jews. The entire
idea is false and destructive. The Jews are no more privileged than anyone
else in the world who has not accepted Christ as the savior. Their
anti-Christian religions are not going to benefit them in the least. If they
become saved, they will be saved in spite of their religions, not because of
them. In fact, the idea that the Jews are in some kind of holding pattern
until the end of time is precisely what the devil would want for them,
because without “targeting” them for salvation by preaching the Gospel, it
consigns all the Jews of today to a life without salvation in Jesus Christ,
leading ultimately to the damnation of their souls. This is precisely why
having the correct doctrine is so important, since false doctrine ultimately
leads to damnation. NO REAL URGENCY Finally,
the Catholic News Service states: “In his letter to bishops, Msgr.
Malloy said that if the Congregation for Clergy grants ‘recognitio,’ or approval, to the revised passage it will be
incorporated into the next printing of the U.S. Catholic Catechism for
Adults. ‘The next printing will not occur until the remaining volumes from
the latest printing are exhausted,’ he added. Adopted by the U.S. bishops in
November 2004 and later approved by the Vatican, the 664-page adult catechism
is the first official catechism produced by the nation’s bishops since the creation
of the Baltimore Catechism, first published in 1885 and revised in 1941. In
the first two weeks after its July 31, 2006, publication, it sold more than
25,000 copies, according to USCCB Publishing. Therese Brown, associate
director for marketing, sales and service at USCCB Publishing, said about
190,000 copies of the adult catechism had been sold to date. Another printing
of 50,000 copies took place in May and those copies are expected to run out
around the middle of next year, she said.” Barring a systematic
retrieval of all the erroneous catechisms the USCCB sold, at the least the
USCCB is obligated to issue an official retraction and apology on its website
and make every effort to let the public know that the reason the statement
from page 131 was summarily excised out of its catechism was that it was
clearly erroneous, or, readjusting Fr. Massa’s words, the statement on page
131 was “flat out wrong.” As it stands, although the USCCB’s removal of the
erroneous statement is much appreciated, considering the comments made by
both Msgr. Malloy and Fr. Massa, I am quite leery that the same dual covenant
mentality persists in the thinking of these men, and that the addition of
Romans 9:4-5 into page 131 was for the purpose of making it appear as if the Jews
still possess the Mosaic covenant, but this time the catechism has stamped it
with divine approval from the pen of St. Paul. Nothing could be further from
the truth for St. Paul. The USCCB has an obligation to teach, clearly and
distinctly, that the Jews do not possess any individual covenant with God,
whether it be with Moses, Abraham or David, for all those covenants have
either been abrogated or have transitioned into the New Covenant in Jesus
Christ, respectively. In brief, if the Jew does not accept Christ, then he
possesses no covenant that gives him a “real relationship with God.” Robert A. Sungenis,
Ph.D. is
president of Bellarmine
Theological Forum, formerly Catholic Apologetics International. |
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